Dungeon Streaming in a Chastity-Reversed World with 1:99 Male-to-Female Ratio! I Might Be a Rare Man, But I’ll Risk My Life to Find a Wife! - 56-57

Chapter 56: The Man Who Gambles and the Women Who Gamble Part 1

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“You know that Team 9, the H Team, is amazing, right?”

Ittou pulled his eyes wide and made an expression of pure anger, and Kondou pressed a finger to her lower lip and smiled as if she found it amusing. Then she inspected the furious Ittou like one might admire a cute pet, and nodded.

“Yes. That will be delightful. If the students truly grew, that would be nothing but joy for me.”

Ittou ground his teeth at her ever-annoying choice of words. If he pressed her on small details, Kondou might apologize and correct herself. But that apology would be shallow and all it would do was make Ittou more irritated and leave the members of H Team sad. There was no need to draw that out.

Ittou thought he had been facing an enemy like a ghost, one that offered no real satisfaction when struck. For Ittou, Chuma had been a straightforward and easy opponent: he attacked plainly, got angry when resisted, counterattacked, and so on.

But Kondou did not attack him clearly. She merely wove malice into seemingly reasonable statements and repeated excuses. It felt less like targeting a real weakness and more like cutting off a lizard’s tail over and over. Annoying, garish tails kept sprouting up to mock him, while the true body simply laughed at the fool who kept slashing at those tails.

She was an enemy whose real form could not be grasped. Still, Ittou could not back down. For the sake of protecting everyone in H Team, he could not and would not yield. He glared at Kondou again, hard.

“So? If H Team performs well in the midterms, you’ll apologize, right? Because you said so.”

“Yes, yes, I did say that. But… If H Team performs well in the midterms, I’ll apologize. Isn’t that a bit of a one-sided promise? If H Team is totally hopeless, I think it’s fair there’d be some pressure on them to do something. After all, at the rate they were earlier, there’s no way they’d pass the midterms.”

Kondou said this, raising both hands slightly and shaking her head. Her purple hair swayed and the cloying scent of perfume wafted to Ittou’s nose again. He exhaled sharply to disperse the smell and lifted his face.

“Fine. So I should do something if you’re wrong.”

“I—Ittou (-kun) (-sama)!?”

Members of A Team cried out in surprise, and H Team were frozen speechless. Ittou put a hand forward to calm his classmates, then faced Kondou.

“Okaaay~ Then, if H Team fail, Sensei will ask you to do something. Oh. Don’t worry. If Sensei’s request is too difficult for Itsukushima-kun to od, you can tell Sensei that you can’t do it~”

Kusumi thought to herself that this phrasing was sly. If Ittou were asked to do something that would hurt someone, he would probably refuse. But if the request would stain him or wound him personally, he would accept it. Kusumi knew that much about him. Ittou was a fair man and so, Kusumi couldn’t help but feel worried about him. 

(I wonder if Ittou-sama will be all right.)

For some time A Team’s members had been trying to warn Ittou with their eyes, but he barely looked their way. He kept glaring at Kondou with a frightening expression. Kusumi felt a sense of foreboding seeing this normally considerate boy lose himself to anger. That unease dissolved in an instant.

“Hey, you lecherous pervert. Don’t tell me you’re thinking up what you’d have Icchan do for a favor?”

“I-I’m not thinking that!”

“Okay. Calm down—”

“Fuuuuuuuuuuu! Fuuuuuuuu! That person… She’s terrible!!”

Kanna, being pestered by Marin, and Manao restraining Anri—who looked even more ready than Ittou to pounce on Kondou—made Ittou smile wryly.

(He’ll be fine. Let’s believe in him. And H Team too…)

When Kusumi looked, the girls were already running to Ittou’s side. She smiled. Of course they were. The boy she adored… No. The rare, proudly gentle and strong boy of their class, believed in them.

(If they don’t stand up now, they won’t be women, will they?)

They chose to believe in Ittou. They chose to answer his faith and bet on their shared victory. They staked their battered pride. They decided to fight once more. Not to avoid being disliked by Ittou, but because they wanted to meet his expectations.

They lined up beside him and mirrored his glare at Kondou. Feeling their shifting presence behind him, Ittou turned, grinned with certainty, and faced them together.

“Kondou-sensei, we… We will definitely win this bet against you. Absolutely!”

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Chapter 57: The Man Who Gambles and the Women Who Gamble Part 2

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Kondou laughed as she met Ittou’s glare head-on.

No matter how intensely Ittou glared at her, Kondou’s expression didn’t waver in the slightest. Ittou could do nothing but tense his face and continue to glare at her. His clothes began to cling damply to his body, as if he had just remembered that they were in a swamp dungeon.

Even so, he didn’t look away. If he looked away now, he would lose everything. That was what Ittou believed as he continued to stare at Kondou. It happened the moment Kondou’s tongue once again slid across her lips.

“…! Ittou! Your feet!”

“Itsukushima! Below you!”

Anri and Danbara shouted at the same time.

Reacting to their voices, Ittou looked down and what reflected in his eyes was the sight of a blue serpent leaping out from among the heap of corpses. It was one that still clung to life. Having witnessed the death of so many of its kind and resigned itself to its own death, its eyes were bloodshot with rage far beyond anything it had shown even when struck by Noshiro’s Hatred. It opened its jaws wide—so wide they seemed ready to tear apart—as it sprang forward.

But its target wasn’t Ittou. It was Kondou. All Ittou felt toward Kondou now was anger.

Yet, the lessons drilled into him—to cherish others, to protect women—kicked in instinctively. He gripped his black sword tightly, twisted his body midair, and leapt sideways so as not to catch Kondou in his attack as he swung with all his might.

The serpent’s charge was fierce. Even if his blade reached in time, it would be by the narrowest margin. If possible, he wanted Kondou to step back and gain some safe distance. It wasn’t that he wanted Kondou to get hurt, on the contrary. That was why he shouted, to protect the woman named Kondou.

“Sensei!”

In Ittou’s view, Kondou turned toward him, her lips parting.

“No probleeeem.”

Still smiling, Kondou snapped her fingers. A bluish-purple aura erupted from her body, spreading into a mist that gathered behind her and took the form of a gigantic frog. Even though it was nothing but magical fog, the presence it exuded was overwhelming. Both the H-Team members and the A-Team gasped in awe.

“Taaang.”

At Kondou’s word, the mist-frog opened its enormous mouth. Its tongue coiled around Kondou’s leg, then shot out to capture the charging serpent, swallowing it whole into the misty appendage.

“Ugh…!”

The one most shocked was Ittou, who had been closest and already mid-attack. Unable to stop, his black sword came crashing down upon the tongue of the mist-frog Kondou had summoned.

But his blade was effortlessly deflected, and he was thrown backward violently. He tried to twist his body to land, but the momentum was too great. He nearly fell to the ground, only to be caught by A-Team members, as well as Marin, Manao, and Danbara.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry, Itsukushima-kun. The snake came flying at me so suddenly that I panicked and used my Original magic.”

Looking down at him with a teasing smile, Kondou stuck out her tongue. The mist-frog compressed its tongue-like appendage, crushing the serpent within. The sickening sound of bones cracking echoed, and the transformed remains of the serpent melted away instantly under Kondou’s magic.

Both H-Team and A-Team were struck speechless by the sheer magical power and speed of her summoning. Even Ittou could say nothing for a while, overwhelmed by the scale of her strength. Still, there was one thing he couldn’t stop himself from asking. With trembling legs, he forced himself to stand.

“Why…?”

If they fought now, Ittou knew he would lose instantly. The gap between them was that enormous. That was precisely why he had to ask.

“Why?! Why didn’t you help everyone when you had that kind of power?!”

If she had used that frog’s power earlier, there would have been no need to call for help. In fact, neither he nor Kanna would have had to come. In that case, they might never have had a chance to understand the H-Team better. Even so, he couldn’t stop himself from asking. His whole body trembled—fear, anger, frustration all tangled together.

Kondou only continued to look at him, still smiling gently.

“I told you, didn’t I? I panicked. I’m sorry, okay?”

That’s a lie.

That was all Ittou could think. But he couldn’t do anything. Technically, her explanation made sense. Between an adult and a child, the adult’s judgment would be considered correct. And since the person standing before him was overwhelmingly stronger than he was, Ittou had nothing more to say.

“Now then, let’s go home. Go home, everyone. I’m so glad you’re all safe.”

Leaving behind a cloyingly sweet scent, Kondou took the lead. Guided by Marin, the members of both A-Team and H-Team followed behind her. Ittou trailed last. Thanks to Marin and Manao, no one looked back—they all just followed Kondou’s lead.

Ittou ran weakly after them, his blurred vision fixed on Kondou’s distant back. He scolded himself to stop crying and kept moving forward.

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